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Saturday, March 07, 2009

St. Sebastian, Pray for Us

Perhaps as a diversionary tactic to deflect attention from their ongoing destruction of the American economy, the left is turning its attention to another hated relic of Western Imperialism, the Holy Catholic Church.

In Connecticut, a state where rabid anti-Catholicism is a hoary old tradition, once the provenance of the right, later and effortlessly assumed by the left, the Judiciary Committee of the Connecticut State Legislature has introduced a bill into the General Assembly that would, according to Fr. Greg Markey, the estimable pastor of St. Mary's Parish in Norwalk, remove from bishops and pastors, "any administrative, financial and legal power over their parishes."

A quick perusal of the bill suggests to this non-lawyer one could pin a copy of the Bill of Rights to the wall, throw darts randomly and every time land one on a violated amendment. The Supremes would certainly overturn it if it ever got that far. The bill's sponsors are surely aware of its blatant unconstitutionality and probably introduced it merely as a taunt, sort of a "we won" to the Holy Catholic Church. It should, however, also serve as a warning to all, not just Catholics, the viciousness of the left and the contempt it holds for the institutions of this country we hold dear.

A federal appeals court ruling has brought an Oregon man one step closer to suing the Vatican for sexual abuse he says he suffered by a Roman Catholic priest.

In a 59-page decision issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the man -- who says he was molested in the 1960s by a priest at a Catholic school -- can pursue a civil lawsuit against the Holy See because the priest allegedly abused him while serving in a religious capacity.

Suing the Vatican has long been, if you will, the Holy Grail of the tort industry, which is, like Willie Sutton the bank robber, going where the money is. The Church in this country bears a lot of the blame for this ruling, for years stymieing and evading responsibility for the relatively small number of rogue priests who couldn't keep their penises inside their cassocks or their hands outside of boys' trousers. Just the same, the ruling is a welcome development for the left, which long ago made an unholy alliance with the trial lawyers in order to more efficiently attack those institutions of western civilization it so despises.

UPDATE: I neglected to mention two bills making their way through the New York State Legislature that will, if passed, according to Cardinal Egan,

rescind the statute of limitations in some sexual abuse cases. This issue has grave moral and legal consequences...The legislation as proposed last year (bills A4560B and S4614A) would allow anyone who was sexually abused at any time in the past to file a lawsuit. . . . Thus, a person who claimed he or she was abused in 1930 could now file a lawsuit even if the alleged abuser and other persons with knowledge of the incident were dead.

In a nod to the left and the teachers union, employees of public schools are specifically exempted from this legislation; it is a license to print money for the trial lawyers, taking the form of a bill of attainder.